Gambia: Rejoinder. Ref: Dr. Isatou Sarr: Building A Healthy Gambia

You are blessed, stay bless and be blessed forever. The Medium you created to enlighten your fellow countrymen is among the driving force behind the changes we have achieved today in the Gambia. I will join the thousands of Gambians in congratulating you and your team for an excellent job done since you exile from the motherland.

Pa, I want to commend our sister Dr. Isatou Sarr, for her brilliant write up captioned; Building a Healthy Gambia. Her piece is not only an academic write up that is nice to read, but one that when technically implemented by the stakeholders, will reshape the future of the nation, as a healthy nation breeds intellects that will ultimately develop the nation. Dr. Sarr mentioned among other things: Access to health for all Gambia

1. Affordability

2 Highest quality

3 has an impact to the nation.

She is 100% right if this is used as a blueprint, and follow best practices from other countries, then health wise, the world will be Gambia’s oyster when it comes to health care. To Dr Sarr, I want to say bravo, and keep up the excellent job.

I just want to add to Dr’s list 5. A welfare system that works for the disable people in our communities.

Gambia needs a welfare system that caters for the needs of the disable individuals in our communities ( Blind, deaf, physical disable individuals, ones with learning disabilities, mental illness and the down syndromes). These individuals are neglected, abused and generally not adequately catered for by the health care system in the Gambia.

To accomplish this, stakeholders more so government through the local authorities should develop a white paper that will re-examine the physical, mental socioeconomic and psychological need of these individuals, categorize them, and develop tailor made person centered support plan for the individual’s needs. The Social Welfare department should work in collaboration with the ministry of health and the local authorities to ensure these category of citizens are adequately carered for. For example Banjul City Council to register all disable individuals their that municipality, and share this data with the Social Welfare department, who will in turn assess the needs of this individuals, and formulate a CARE FUNDING CALCULATOR, to calculate the care cost of these individuals and bill the BCC, to fund their care with subside from central government. This will then be applied to all the fives municipalities in the country, as these individuals deserve better from society more so the local authority and central government.

It might be premature to talk about care/residential homes for these individual, but every local authority should have a dedicated team and office building who will without bias, fear, favour or ill will take care of the need of this individuals, and report cases of bad practice and or neglect to the Social Welfare department for actions, as these individuals are always discriminated against.

Pa disability does not mean inability. Physically some of these individuals are disabled, but that does not mean that they cannot contribute to society, as their brains are sharp. With proper support, they can be educated to become accountants, lawyers, teachers, social workers, advocates, politicians and lot more. Once they have a career, they will also contribute to society by paying tax, and be self-sufficient.

In addition to the above, newly build facilities should cater for disable access, and old ones to make modification to cater for easy access for the disable people ( Disable access ramps, rails and) to be installed. Some people may not agree with me, some may say that my contribution in alien, but we as a society, as a nation owe a lot to these individuals.

Once again Pa keep up the excellent job.

Long live Gambia, freedom Newspaper, Pa Nderry and his team, and long live humanity